Meet MGA’s Fall 2024 Commencement Speakers

Author: News Bureau
Posted: Monday, November 25, 2024 12:00 AM
Categories: School of Education and Behavioral Sciences | School of Aviation | Students | School of Computing | School of Arts and Letters | School of Health and Natural Sciences | School of Business | Pressroom

Macon, GA

Middle Georgia State University is honored to have these state and regional leaders as commencement speakers for our fall 2024 graduation ceremonies! Our deepest thanks to all of them for taking time out of their busy schedules to help celebrate our graduates!

9:30 a.m. December 11 Ceremony: Justice Verda M. Colvin was appointed to the Supreme Court on July 20, 2021, by Gov. Brian Kemp. She is the first African American female appointed by a Republican governor to the state’s high court.

Born and raised in Atlanta, Justice Colvin attended Daniel McLaughlin Therrell High School. She earned her bachelor’s degree in government and religion from Sweet Briar College in Virginia and her juris doctorate from the University of Georgia School of Law. Justice Colvin discovered her love for trial work early in her career as an Assistant Solicitor in Athens-Clarke County. From there, she went on to serve as Assistant General Counsel to Clark Atlanta University and then as Assistant District Attorney in Clayton County.

Before becoming a judge, Justice Colvin was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Middle District of Georgia, where she prosecuted a wide range of offenses from drug trafficking to white collar crime. Her time as judge also includes nearly six years as a Superior Court judge in the Macon Judicial Circuit. Justice Colvin also remains active in the community, serving on numerous charity and organization boards in addition to working and teaching at First Baptist Church, where she is a member. She is the proud mother of two children, Weston and Taylor, and the wife of Nathaniel Walker, with whom she shares two other adult children, Nathan and Nathalie.

12:30 p.m. December 11 Ceremony: Caylee Noggle is the President and CEO of the Georgia Hospital Association. 

Prior to joining GHA, she served for nearly 20 years for the State of Georgia in various leadership capacities, most recently as the Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Community Health (DCH), the state’s lead Medicaid and health planning agency. During her time at DCH, she led efforts to implement new Directed Payment Programs that secured over $1 billion in new funding for hospitals around the state.

Her tenure in state government spanned several state agencies, offices, and policy areas, including education, economic development, natural resources, transportation, criminal justice, and healthcare. She played a central role in the state’s COVID-19 operational response, coordinating staffing augmentation for healthcare facilities statewide, facilitating the Alternate Care Facility at the Georgia World Congress Center, and leading cross-agency efforts to plan and deploy vaccination and testing sites across the state.

She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Georgia Lottery Corporation, an Honorary State Trooper, and a 2022 graduate of Leadership Georgia. She and her family live in Atlanta and are members of Oak Grove United Methodist Church.

3:30 p.m. December 11 Ceremony: Jessica Walden is president and CEO of the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce, where she serves as a key representative and advocate for local business. She promotes Macon, Ga., as the best community for business and directs activities, programming and advocacy that support the chamber as the voice of local business. 

She began this role in fall of 2022 after serving as a business and leadership advisor for the University of Georgia. Her 24-year career in community and economic development includes the College Hill Corridor revitalization initiative that leveraged over $200 million of investment into some of Macon’s most historic neighborhoods.

Born to a family synonymous with southern music, Walden continues that legacy through the music history tour, Rock Candy Tours, that she co-founded with her husband, Jamie Weatherford, in 2011.

Walden is a certified Economic Development Planner (EDP) through the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) in Entrepreneur-led Economic Development. She is the first in Georgia to hold this certification that focuses on building communities centered on entrepreneurship and small business creation, sustainability, and growth.

Walden is a 2009 graduate of Leadership Macon and a 2013 graduate of Leadership Georgia, where she served as a trustee and program chair.

9:30 a.m. December 12 Ceremony: Rep. David Knight, Georgia House of Representatives, District 134, grew up in Griffin, Georgia, and graduated from Woodward Academy.

He attended the University of Georgia and Augusta College where he completed his CPA internship and earned his bachelor’s degree. Upon graduation, he moved to Albany and then to Atlanta for work before coming back to Griffin to practice accounting in 1999. He has since launched a consulting firm to help develop policy strategies for effective influence, communication, and implementation of public policy.

Since first being elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 2005, Knight has worked on and passed comprehensive legislation in the areas of healthcare, tax, education, and conservation. He is Chair of the House Higher Education Appropriations subcommittee and serves as a committee member on the Rules, Ways and Means, Special Committee on Access to Quality Health Care, Game Fish and Parks, Higher Education, Banks and Banking and Small Business Development committees. He is also the Chair of the House Sportsman’s Caucus.

Knight met and married his wife Marie in Griffin in 2005, and together they have one son, John David.